Mobile devices that are used for data communication typically include e-mail applications or other messaging applications in which e-mails are received with an associated attachment document. The mobile device typically includes the native application that is required for opening, viewing and possibly modifying and saving the attachment document. For example, if a user receives a Microsoft Word™ document or an Adobe Acrobat™ file in an e-mail on the mobile device, the user can simply open these attachment documents in Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat respectively to view and possibly modify these files.
However, to reduce on communication overhead, the attachment is not initially sent with the e-mail message to the mobile device. Rather, an indication that there is an attachment is sent along with the initial delivery of the e-mail message to the mobile device. The user can then send a request to an enterprise server to receive the entire attachment document or a table of contents (if applicable). Indeed, some mobile communication devices use a client-server model to manage attachment documents. A “thin client” or viewer resides on the mobile communication device. A “fatter server” resides elsewhere (possibly remotely) that is used to convert the entire attachment document, using machine conversion, and then embed the attachment document into communication signals that are sent to the mobile communication device. However, straight-forward machine conversion lacks the capacity for user input which is needed for certain attachment documents.